All throughout the early morning, Kay’s thoughts were on the gang that was after him. His walk to school through the grey streets of Little Italy had him thinking of how he was going to approach gathering information. The idea of talking to students asking about gangs around Toronto sounded like an easy way to get labelled as some wannabe undercover cop and then, promptly, get one’s butt kicked.

  But. Kay could eavesdrop on them. Heck, he could have eavesdropped on anyone, and with his water elemental powers, getting around was easy as pie. His ability to find people to eavesdrop was top notch.

  With that realization, Kay felt a little better about his mission to sniff out the gang that was after him, but then he turned his head to the centre of the city– a comb of towers hanging below and overcast sky. Toronto was a big city; with lots of people. Even if he kept his ears open, overhearing something relevant to gang wouldn’t come quickly.

  He continued to school. It was a Monday with a grey sky looming above so anyone could have expected a bleary, lifeless morning but when Kay entered the front doors and walked through the hall, there was an energy around. He wondered if someone was up and it only took until him passing by a trio of kids hanging around an open locker to intuit what it was.

  “Maybe they’re from some other dimension,” said a kid, leaning up against a locker, “and they come to ours to fight.”

  My fight with the shadow guy! thought Kay. Of course, students would be talking about it! Kay’s family had some conversation about it themselves over the weekend. The story made the Sunday paper and one student must have brought it in as a couple kid huddled around an open copy with the title “GHOST THING AND MYSTERIOUS SHADOW BEING FIGHT!”

  Not everyone seemed to care, but there were enough people clearly talking about it for Kay to realize that he was starting to become a name in Toronto.

  And then he cursed his luck. His name was Ghost Thing! Not anything he chose; Ghost Thing!

  Kay’s locker was adjacent to one belonging to a kid named Joel– a boy Kay often see with a ski cap that didn’t have any classes with. When Kay got to his locker, Joel had some friends hanging around his. Vince, a guy with shaggy blonde hair leaning up on the door of to Kay’s spot, saw Kay coming and leaned up off the wall. “Eh, sorry, man.”

  Listening in on his neighbour’s conversation, Kay shuffled his books and things around to prepare for first period.

  “My neighbour said that if Ghost Thing is real, angels are real, too,” said Clarissa, one of Joel’s chums, that day wearing a red skirt with rubber boots.

  They were talking about him! Kay had to keep it together, casually tending to his backpack while trying to keep a straight face as his neighbours talked about his water mode exploits. Sure, that incident was actually pretty dangerous and Kay nearly got killed by the shadow man, but when Kay looked around he saw others talking with such enthusiasm and he suspected they were discussing Ghost Thing (hard to tell because of all the noise in the halls). People were excited. It might have been a brush with danger for Kay, but for everyone else it was the talk of the town!

  “I heard...” said Joel, and he shifted close to finish the sentence, “if ghosts are real then all science needs to be thrown out and started from square one.”

  Clarissa let out shrill giggle. “Really?”

  Vince chuckled. “All of it? Even math?”

  “Math isn’t part of science,” Joel said, matter-of-factly.

  “Math is science!” said Vince, “It’s the foundation of science!”

  They giggled together. Joel looked over at Kay. “Hey, Norkemasis: what do you think about the ghosts?”

  “Uhhhh...” Kay leaned up from his pack and looked into the eyes of the small crowd wondering his thoughts. He had to make a convincing charade. He had to sound like a regular person commenting on incredible news, not one of the participants in the fight.

  “Maybe they’re from another world,” said Kay, “and they come to ours to fight.”

  This lit up Kay’s neighbours. They smiled and nodded with Joel saying, “See? Told’ja this guy was smart.”

  Kay let out a smirk, bright eyes hiding behind sunglasses, but he closed his locker and made way to his first class.

  All throughout the morning, there were quiet whispers about the fantastical brawl. Kay had Chemistry for second period. His teacher Mr Ramanathan was going over how the solubility of gasses dependant on temperature, with a diagram on the whiteboard of showing carbon dioxide entering salt water.

  Kay was paying attention, getting educated, but two insolent girls were squeaking to one another towards the other side of the room. “Do you think they have birthdays?” asked one of them. The other giggled and said, “I don’t know!”

  Ramanathan stopped. It wasn’t the first time that Monday that he had overheard students talking about the local news. He sighed and put down his marker on the whiteboard tray. “I see that some students have been taken by our recent news about the strangers spotted downtown on Saturday...”

  A girl toward the front asked, “Do you believe it?”

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  It was a simple question and one very appropriately aimed at a science teacher. So the students of Mr Ramanathan’s chemistry class shook off their early Monday fatigue and perked their ears up as the teacher began a discussion on the matter.

  “Well, all I’ve seen is a couple pictures,” said Mr Ramanathan, scratching the back of his ear, “and I’ve heard some witness testimony. That’s not a lot to go by.”

  “What would they do if Ghost Thing was real, though?” asked another student. He then added: “The scientists.”

  “They would analyze him to see how he works,” said the teacher, “maybe dissect him.”

  “Isn’t this thing supposed to be impossible, though?” asked one student. “Doesn’t this break science?”

  “No,” said Mr Ramanathan, “it’s unexpected but all it does is extend our– humanity’s– understanding of science.” He chuckled. “If it’s real.”

  “I think it’s a hoax,” said a boy from the front, “It’s probably meant to drum up publicity for something, like that one episode of the Simpsons with the angel skeleton.”

  Ramanathan shrugged. “Maybe. Again, it’s only a couple photos.” He got up from his desk. “Let’s get back to the lesson, though, shall we?”

  Kay sat there, watching the teacher write on the whiteboard but the boy’s mind was elsewhere. He had to think about what Ghost Thing was. He had to wonder how anyone would find out how he was able to do the things he could do– if it was even a possibility to understand. How could a being like him exist?

  But... dissection? Was that something somebody would do to Ghost Thing?

  Kay shivered. He hoped it didn’t come to that.

  Lunch came and went, Kay wolfed down a small slice of lasagne then hibernated in the upstairs library like he was wont to do. In his World History class, the course was gearing up for everyone to write a paper on a pre-Renaissance historical people. He had his nose inside a book on ancient Rome. Maybe he was distracted with his after school dealings, but Kay couldn’t figure out who to choose.

  He toiled in frustration for the whole period but when fourth period rolled near, Kay figured he would get to his next classroom early. He walked down the second floor hallways as metal music bouncing of its walls. As Kay passed by an open door, he looked inside a classroom to see a bunch of kids gathered around a portable CD player.

  Kay ignored it, he continued down to the door to his World History class. The teacher wasn’t there yet and the door was locked– the dark room resting on the other side of the glass. When the bell blared, students flocked into the halls and jumbled around. After a couple minutes, Ruhollah, another boy from Kay’s class arrived and leaned up against the wall, waiting for the teacher to come and open up the door.

  And then came Roze, another student in Kay’s class. She had curly brown hair that flowed down her left shoulder and– if Kay looked out of the corner of his eye around the shade of his sunglasses– looked like it turned a dark purple towards the ends.

  “Usually the teacher’s here by now,” said Roze, in a tone that was almost blaming Kay and Ruhollah.

  “It’s what you get for coming early,” said Ruhollah. “For not making it to class right on the bell.”

  Roze stood in front of the door, crossing her arms and almost tapping her foot impatiently. She looked at Ruhollah and then Kay. “What are you guys doing for your projects?”

  Ruhollah was more eager to make small talk than Kay. The boy leaned up on his feet, saying, “Uh, I’m doing Ancient Persia. Or ancient Russia if the teacher lets us do civilizations that we don’t have ancestors from.”

  Roze cocked a confused look. Kay was a little perplexed himself. Roze cut a grin. “They wouldn’t block you from picking a place you don’t have a blood relation, too. That would be racist.” She shrugged. “How would they even check that?”

  “Iunno,” said Ruhollah, leaning away from Roze sheepishly and fidgeting with his hands behind his back, “It’s what I heard!”

  Roze dropped the grin. “I’m going to do my paper on the Aztecs.” She dragged a playful glance over at Ruhollah. “If I had to pick someone– something that I had a relation to, I guess Portugal would be it. My mom’s half-German so I guess–” she trailed off– “maybe something German?”

  Kay felt part of the conversation so he spoke up. “Roman times...” he said quietly. “I think I’m doing the Roman empire.”

  Roze gave him an amused look. “They’re not going to let you do the whole Roman empire. It’s too big. You’ll have to pick a specific part. Like the Byzantine empire.” She craned her shrugs. “Or Portugal when Rome owned it.”

  “You should pick one of Rome’s enemies,” said Ruhollah, “Like Carthage or... whoever.”

  “I thought about that,” said Kay, “but I don’t know...”

  Kay didn’t know Ruhollah but the guy gave a friendly tone when Ruhollah said, “Come on! They’re the guys that went up against, like, the world’s biggest empire!”

  “Yeah...” said Kay. He kept quiet and thought, but they all got wiped out.

  Their history teacher, Mr Paonessa, came walking up to the door with some binders underneath his arm and keys in hand. He took a key to the doorknob and it turned with a metallic crunch. Paonessa said, “I think I might start class in the computer lab since we end up going over there, anyway.”

  He opened the door and Kay, Ruhollah and Roze took their seats. Over the next couple minutes, a flush of student entered the classroom and sat down with. True to his word, Paonessa took attendance and once that was done with, he told everyone they were going to move to the computer lab on the other side of the school.

  The lab on the other side of the school was one of the new revamps, completed in 1999. It was full of newer Macintoshes with video editing software installed on most of them and the school internet speed was state-of-the-art or close to it.

  There weren’t more computers than students so Mr Paonessa’s class took all the Macs they could while the others went to the small library off to the side with a steady supply of historical textbooks and encyclopedias. Kay claimed a computer but he logged on the internet without really being sure what he was researching.

  The lab was abuzz with chatter, but Kay’s thoughts drifted across every old civilization he could think of with him not preferring any one. Who was he supposed to pick to do a paper on? After Roze’s comments, he felt childish for picking the Roman empire– the most obvious decision– but he typed “Roman empire” into the search bar anyway and came up with a number of different historical sites.

  Dragging his eyes down a website illustrating a basic chronology of the Roman empire, he caught glimpses of Rome’s invasions of surrounding areas, including the empire’s invasion of Gallic lands. In a bit of clip art, there was an illustration of famous Gallic leader Vercingetorix: a brave warrior who stood up against the Roman empire for the people of his land.

  Mr Paonessa patrolled around the room, checking to see if his students were on the appropriate websites. As he passed by Kay, he saw the young boy peeping along a summary of the Roman empire.

  “Ah!” said Paonessa, “Thinking of doing the Roman empire?”

  Paonessa’s tone was one of interest so it was reassuring for Kay, coming off of Kay worried that Rome was too cliché. Kay said, “Yeah, I, uh, was thinking of doing the Rome invasion of Gaul...” He checked the screen to see how to reference the territory. “Gaul,” he said, literally just saying the word again. He spotted the correct word for the territory. “Gallia.”

  Mr Paonessa nodded with a grin. “That’s always a good one. Plenty of information available. Are you sure you want to do it?”

  Kay skimmed his eyes down the summary again. Rome was a humongous empire and even if the tribes of Gallia banded together, they couldn’t surpass the might of the empire.

  “Yeah,” said Kay. “The invasion of Gallia.”

  Mr Paonessa blessed Kay’s decision and moved along. Kay was left alone with his worries and analogies, getting started on his paper.